When Rachel Garnett noticed a loss of closeness between her and her husband, she turned detective, looking to the past for clues to help them reconnect

Rachel Garnett

Becoming a relationship detective started with my husband’s new beard. At a party a year ago, he was complimented on it, to which he laughingly replied, ‘Rachel hasn’t noticed yet.’

This wasn’t entirely true – OK, I’d glanced at it quickly. It suited him, but I was busy, so I hadn’t bothered commenting and promptly forgot about it. The beard didn’t need to be fed, paid for or represent a deadline, so I deemed it unimportant.

But his response made me realise that, years ago, I would have said it looked good, or at least given him an opinion. We still love and fancy each other, but we had become so bogged down in the day-to-day that giving him a compliment was something else that hadn’t made my to-do list.

I am not taking all the blame; my husband is just as bad. He used to put his arm around me or take my hand when we were out, much to the mortification of our children. Coming soon after the beard incident, our 17-year-old asked him why he no longer bothered to hold Mum’s hand? My husband hadn’t realised that he’d stopped and, to be fair, neither had I, but suddenly I missed it.

I started to become aware of other little things we had let go – for instance, we used to laugh over silly little things we had experienced in our day, but we had become so serious! The demands of work, money, children, cooking and cleaning had begun to swallow our relationship. Our connection is the cornerstone of family life, which made it even starker that it was not getting the attention it deserved. It is a common scenario – but what to do?